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NEWS September 2023
September 2023. Hi Atlantipedes, At present I am in Sardinia for a short visit. Later we move to Sicily and Malta. The trip is purely vacational. Unfortunately, I am writing this in a dreadful apartment, sitting on a bed, with access to just one useable socket and a small Notebook. Consequently, I possibly will not […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Nefertiti
Queen of Sheba *
The Queen of Sheba is one of the few ancient historical figures that has not been linked with Atlantis. Wikipedia refers to her as “a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In the original story, she brings a caravan of valuable gifts for the Israelite King Solomon………..modern historians identify Sheba with the South Arabian kingdom of Saba in present-day Yemen and Ethiopia. The queen’s existence is disputed among historians.”(a)
In Arabia she was known as Bilqis, to the Christians of Ethiopia she was Makeda, while Josephus referred to her as Nicaule.
Nevertheless, she is mentioned from time to time on these pages, particularly regarding her identity and the time of her reign. In the 1950s Immanuel Velikovsky, proposed, in Ages in Chaos [039] that either six centuries were missing from Israel’s history or had six hundred ghost years crept into Egyptian history. One of the keys to his revised chronology was the identification of the Queen of Sheba as the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut.
This caused quite a stir at the time and generated a degree of support for Velikovsky. However, in 1986 John Bimson published a paper, ‘Hatshepsut and the Queen of Sheba’, debunking Velikovsky’s contention, which had the effect of eroding that support. Then in 1997, Damien Mackey re-ignited the controversy with a paper challenging Bimson’s conclusion(f) and so the debate continues(h).
There are a number of 21st-century commentators who still accept Velikovsky’s identification of Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba including Emmet Sweeney [1867.25] and Emmet Scott(d), Damien Mackey(f), as well as Ken Griffith & Darrell K. White(e) and, I might add, no lack of opponents either.
Eulalio Eguia jr. offered a different Egyptian identification suggesting Nefertiti instead of Hatshepsut(b). Riaan Booysen went further, not only agreeing with Eguia but proposing that Nefertiti was also Helen of Troy(c)!
Among the Ethiopians, there is a tradition that the Queen of Sheba and Solomon had a child, Menelik, who visited Jerusalem and returned to Ethiopia with the Ark of the Covenant. There is no evidence to support this tale which is thought to have been “originally created to legitimize Yukuno Amlak’s rule of the late 13th century AD who had killed the Zagwa king to obtain power.”
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba
(b) Nefertiti – The Queen of Sheba | PDF | Tutankhamun | Akhenaten (scribd.com) *
(c) Thera and the Exodus – Graham Hancock Official Website
(d) Hatshepsut: Queen of Sheba: Scott, Emmet: 9780875869452: Amazon.com: Books (I suspect that Emmet Sweeney, a Scot, and Emmet Scott are the same person and share the same publisher)
Borchardt, Ludwig
Ludwig Borchardt (1863-1938) was a German Egyptologist who was the
discoverer of the famous bust of Nefertiti in 1912 at Amarna. He lived and worked in Egypt for a number of years until he retired from the German Institute for Ancient Egyptian Archaeology in Cairo.
>In recent years there have been claims that the bust was a fake(c).<
In the mid-1920s he became interested in the search for Atlantis. At a conference in Paris in 1926 he suggested Chott el-Jerid as the most likely location for Plato’s lost city, which was inundated around 1250 BC.
The source for the above reference to Atlantis(a) seems to be incorrect and may be the result of confusion with Paul Borchardt. However, the same details are quoted on another site(b), although both may have used a common source
(a) https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/borchardtl.htm (offline Jan. 2017) See Archive 2888
(b) https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/borchardt-ludwig
(c) Is the Bust of Nefertiti Fake? | DailyArtMagazine | Art History Stories *
Sweeney, Emmet John*
Emmet John Sweeney is a Scottish historian, who graduated from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. He has followed the lead of Immanuel Velikovsky and produced several books[520][845] arguing for a radical revision of the generally accepted chronologies of the early civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean.
He controversially claims that “all the civilisations on both sides of the Atlantic arose more or less simultaneously, sometime between 1100 and 1200 BC” [700.202].
In Empire Of Thebes, Or, Ages In Chaos Revisited [1867] Sweeney returns to the work of Velikovsky and “seeks to complete the work which he commenced, identifying the problems Velikovsky could not solve, and bringing forward a great body of evidence not even mentioned by Velikovsky which supports his identification of Hatshepsut with the Queen of Sheba. Velikovsky was rejected by the academic establishment because of a number of contradictions in the chronology he outlined. Sweeney shows that despite some gaps and incompletions, his (Velikovsky’s) books were brilliant works of scholarship with much to recommend them. For decades now various scholars have attempted to solve the enigma. Yet the answer was stunningly simple and in front of us all the time. Empire of Thebes provides the solution and finally allows the possibility of a complete and satisfactory reconstruction of ancient history. This work calls for a much more radical shortening of ancient chronology and asserts that Velikovsky ran into a dead end because he placed too much reliance on the Bible as a chronological measuring rod.”
Velikovsky’s (and Sweeney’s) identification of the Queen of Sheba with Hatshepsut was recently endorsed in a paper by Ken Griffith and Darrell K. White (f). However, others, such as Eulalio Eguia, identify the Queen of Sheba with Nefertiti(g).
He further claims that the Egyptian pyramids were constructed around 800 BC(d) and that Atlantis was destroyed around the same period! This date is significant as it coincides with an event that led to devastation in Southern Germany and the Alps involving huge inundations and tilting of lake shorelines which could only be brought about by a very powerful seismic upheaval(b).
“His claim that the Great Pyramid was constructed around 850 BC, rather than 2550 BC, is viewed as unfounded sensationalism. Sweeney’s claims that the pyramid-builders would have needed steel tools to cut granite, basalt and diorite, is said to have been disproved by the researches of Denys A. Stocks, who shows (Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology, 2003) that granite, for example, can be worked by pounding it with a harder stone, such as basalt. Sweeney however has pointed out that while large granite surfaces can be ground down in this way, Pyramid Age sculptors must have been in possession of steel tools, since the carving of basalt and diorite portrait statues, which display details of eyes, nose, ears, etc, can only have been executed using very sharp and fine cutting-tools.”(e)
He has also tackled the Arthurian legend, regarding which he considers Stonehenge to have been Arthur’s ‘round table’. The blurb for his 2001 book Arthur and Stonehenge[918] goes further stating that “As for Arthur himself, he was the primitive bear-god “Artos”, the Celtic version of Hercules. Originally portrayed with a bearskin over his head and shoulders and carrying a great oaken club, he became the prototype of the Greek Hercules when Hellenic traders, braving the wild waters of the Atlantic in search of tin, heard his story from the Britons.”
Sweeney has now ventured beyond his comfort zone and devoted his talents to the Atlantis question. He argues for the existence of a large island in the Atlantic, whose remnants today are the Azores. He sees this island as a stepping-stone to the Americas, which is necessary to explain the evidence of transatlantic contacts in the very distant past. He also takes the opportunity to highlight weaknesses in radiocarbon dating (p218).
The Washington Times, which is owned by the ‘Moonies’, gave his book a favourable review(a)! The reviewer, Martin Sieff, a native of Belfast and Velikovskian catastrophist, is accused by Jason Colavito[915] of using his critique to promote Sweeney more as a catastrophist rather than as an atlantologist and does so without revealing Sieff’s catastrophist background.
A more critical review of Sweeney’s work can also be found elsewhere on the Internet(c).
(a) https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/25/book-review-atlantis/print/
(b) H. Gams and R. Nordhagen, Mitteil. der Geograph. Ges. in Munchen, XVI, H. 2 (1923), pp. 13-348. R. Sernander, ‘Klimaverschlechterung, Postglaciale’ in Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, VII (1926); O. Paret, Das Neue Bild der Vorgeschuchte (1948), p.44.
(c) https://web.archive.org/web/20140416073952/https://wikibin.org/articles/emmet-sweeney.html
(d) https://www.algora.com/140/book/details.html
Booysen, Riaan
Riaan Booysen is a South African researcher (and avid tennis fan) who has written articles on a number of ancient mysteries, which can be found on his website(e). Among his controversial ideas are that the Queen of Sheba, Nefertiti and Helen of Troy were a single person(d).
He offers a major paper on Atlantis(a), in which he bravely identifies its location as an extensive landmass which included present day Australia. Unlike other writers who have offered similar suggestions based on guesswork, Booysen offers a more coherent thesis based on the geology of the South Pacific and early cartography.
His theory requires a radical redating of the Antarctic ice cap, which has led to continued debate on the internet(c).
>Booysen has now (Nov 2023) developed his Atlantis theories further and published them in book form, Atlantis Revealed [2079] explaining that “I have since (end 2022) decided to revisit and thoroughly study and expand, where necessary, my Atlantis theory once more, with the intent of having it formally published. My latest studies include significantly more information than previously available on my website, and several additional hypotheses about the fate of the Atlanteans after their continent had been ‘sunk’. This occurred when a comet glanced off the face of the earth ca. 11,600 years ago, knocking a dent of around 8,000m in its crust and thereby ‘sinking’ Atlantis (parts of Terra Australis are clearly visible on NASA’s submarine topography maps of the world).”<
Booysen published another contentious offering in 2013, entitled Thera and the Exodus [1025] in which he argues that there were at least two Theran eruptions which led to two separate ‘Exodus’ events by the biblical Israelites, whom he identifies as the Hyksos!
He dates these events to ca. 1613 & 1450 BC.
Booysen has now commented on negative feedback from his book(b).
A year later he ventured into even more contentious territory with the publication of BARBELO – The Story of Jesus Christ, now available as a free ebook(f).
(a) https://www.riaanbooysen.com/terra-aus (link broken) See (g).*
(b) https://www.riaanbooysen.com/thera
(c) https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=265894&st=0
(d) https://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/BooysenR1.php
(e) https://www.riaanbooysen.com/theories
(f) https://www.riaanbooysen.com/barbelo
(g) https://riaanbooysen.com/atlantis *